Components of Reality: The Setting

Is Hell a Los Angeles McMansion?

When telling stories using games of any kind, it’s important to think about what we call narrative vectors: What are the components of the ecosystem from which story emerges? 

In video games, this might involve considering the setting and the player’s role in it; the player’s goal and the mechanics to work toward it; the player’s desire (not always the same as their goal), and the tools designers have to make that desire complicated. 

Let’s take a look at some of the essential components of unscripted social games! Today: The Setting. Where and how do we stage the simulated circumstance?

In The Traitors, cast members play in Scotland’s Ardross Castle and its misty environs, to create timeless secret society vibes in a game about betrayal. Love Island sees its influencer-ready young singles confined to a Mallorca villa emblazoned with neon nightmare mottos. On Survivor, the setting is practically a character all its own: Each new season brings a different far-flung island setting with its own climate and creature considerations. 

Many, many reality shows throughout history were staged in Los Angeles “McMansions”, garish architectures that simulate the fantasy of wealth and celebrity. Earlier MTV dating shows like “Flavor of Love” and “Rock of Love” were often filmed in McMansions that the story pretended were the celebrities’ own homes, but they were not. 

These are stories about how celebrities live, and the wild relationships they attract, with a heap of absurdity to it. Ozzy, Sharon and the Osbourne family transformed the landscape of unscripted television by letting cameras roll alongside their actual idiosyncratic home life, whetting audience appetites to see inside famous people’s mansions. But few others struck that balance of truth and performance, and most of the mansions were fake. 

It gets deeper: MTV Cribs was a reality program whose only real promise was to show viewers the wild lives and interiors of wealthy pop culture figures – but it turns out, this was often mostly simulated. 

One of my favorite episodes of Cribs stars Nickelback lead Chad Kroeger going through the motions of showing a crew around his McMansion. Except this is obviously not his house – it’s so barren it’s unclear anyone lives there at all, and Chad’s performance is so listless it’s funny that they even aired this:

Okay, you know what? Chad Kroeger seems like the kind of person where this could, in fact, be his house for real. But that’s something I love about this format — the line becomes blurred. When everything is performative and absurd, life’s own natural absurdity seems even more unreal by comparison.

Speaking of comparison, here’s rapper Redman’s Cribs episode: He invites the crew to his unexpectedly relatable place on Staten Island, where one of his cousins is asleep on the living room floor.

The humor and authenticity of Redman’s presentation really underlines how the McMansion lie was basically everywhere on television in the Y2Ks. Redman was also candid in public about being asked by MTV to rent a different house for a “better” narrative. 

Regardless of a reality show’s subject matter, fake homes of some kind are a common stage for stories about love, wealth, and families — our real live Barbie dollhouses. Islands play host to stories of “tribal” group behavior, often while a real culture is living nearby. Tropical villas are supposed to put characters in the mood for a summer couple’s holiday, but there they’re subject to a dystopian set of rules.

We do this in video game design, too: If traversal is a mechanic, then we need to choose landscapes that are readable to the eye, with interesting landmarks. If we’re telling the story through things like found recordings, used computers or research materials, then it makes sense to set scenes in laboratories or libraries. The setting of a game like Bloodborne produces an infinite slurry of intimate dread and soft mystery to narrativize the intense moment-to-moment combat. 

In both cases, the setting is chosen based on the kind of story that is supposed to take place — but a lot of weird and delightful elements emerge because of the constructed setting’s inherent surreality.

Please comment if you have thoughts: What’s your favorite McMansion show? Are there other simulated settings you’ve seen in unscripted that you enjoyed, and why? What are some games you’ve played where your sense of the story and your role in it is intimately tied to the location you are in? 

Further material: 

My talk at Roguelike Celebration 2023 about the procedurally-generated McMansion game that Brian Bucklew and I are prototyping 

“The Mansion”, a very atmospheric song by The Microphones that has nothing to do with this topic, but I love it